What do you eat in Guangdong for the New Year?
Guangdong people generally define time from the 23rd day of the lunar calendar1February to the 6th day of the first month of the following year 16, which is collectively referred to as Chinese New Year. The reunion dinner is the highlight of the festival, which is not only colorful, but also very particular about meaning. Worship ancestors or gods before eating the reunion dinner, and eat after the incense sticks are burned.
Generally, there are chicken (with a plan), fish (with more than one year), oyster sauce (with a good market), lettuce (with wealth), yuba (with wealth), garlic (with calculation) and so on for good luck. In addition, there are fried oil angle with red bean stuffing and glutinous rice skin, fried fried piles and fried rice cakes. Snack fruits such as taro cake, sugar lotus seeds, fried rice noodles, sesame crisp and peanut crisp.
1, rice cake
In Guangdong, the new year's goods during the Spring Festival are rice cakes. Even if you don't eat them, you should put a piece at home to show your kindness. Rice cakes have a good color-"high year", which has the meaning of making a fortune, making a step by step and being sweet, implying a complete and sweet life in the new year. Cantonese people like to slice rice cakes and fry them in a pot. Bite it down, the surface aroma is tangy, and the inside is sticky and soft rice cake, plus the sweet taste, which is very popular among adults and children.
The most traditional Cantonese-style rice cake is dark orange and plain, but it tastes different. Nowadays, many merchants also make the shape of rice cakes, which means that they are high every year and have more than one year. It has become a double-hearted head. Many people like to buy these rice cakes as gifts besides eating them themselves.
2, sugar ring
Among the seasonal foods, the sugar ring is probably the most beautiful and eye-catching. Its shape is unique, with a ring outside and a five-pointed star inside, which is interlocking and endless.
Sugar rings have a long history. According to the records in Dongguan County Records, the sugar ring was moved southward by Dongguan ancestors. One of the foods brought from the north. In ancient Central Plains, sugar rings were made of flour. Later, when they arrived in Lingnan, they were changed to glutinous rice flour. When they were fried in an oil pan until they were cooked, they were golden yellow, which also implied that gold was full of houses.
3、
Most southern families are used to the traditional custom of having a family get-together on the morning of the Spring Festival. It is said that Yuanxiao symbolizes family reunion, and eating Yuanxiao means family happiness and all the best in the new year. Eating Yuanxiao on the fifteenth day of the first month is the same custom all over the country.
The custom of eating Yuanxiao on the Lantern Festival was formed in the Song Dynasty. Yuanxiao was often called ""at first, because it floats on the water after boiling, which is beautiful and reminiscent of a bright moon hanging in the clouds. There is a bright moon in the sky, dumplings in a bowl, and every family is round and round, symbolizing reunion and good luck. Therefore, eating Yuanxiao expresses people's love for family reunion.
4, bacon
It is a traditional custom in Guangdong to eat preserved meat in the New Year. "Preserved meat" only existed years ago, such as sausage, preserved meat and preserved pig scalp. Its delicious taste makes people salivate. In the old agricultural society, since the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, housewives will be busy preparing food for the New Year. Because curing bacon takes a long time, it must be started as soon as possible.
When purchasing bacon, the appearance should be smooth, the lean meat should be hard and purplish red, and the fat meat should be pressed with the finger without dents and golden yellow. Each piece of meat is neat, and it is the first-class product with a fragrant and delicious sugar and wine flavor, which will be particularly refreshing but not greasy. If the bacon has an odor and the meat color turns black, it indicates that it has been stored for too long.
5. Fried rice cakes
There are many kinds of cakes in Guangdong, the most famous of which is Yangjiang fried rice cake, commonly known as powder cake or hard cake. It is called the four famous cakes in Guangdong together with Foshan Blind Cake, Zhongshan Almond Cake and Xiqiao Cake. In Guangdong, there is a custom of making fried rice cakes during the Spring Festival.
South Guangdong custom, making fried rice cakes during the Spring Festival, later became a year-round snack. The whole family, old and young, went into battle and made cakes in harmony. Stir-fry uncooked rice in an iron pan, grind it into rice flour with a stone mill, add yellow sugar, white sugar and brown sugar, add peanuts and other ingredients, press it into a wooden cake seal, demould it and bake it with charcoal.
6, frying pile
For Lao Guang, making fried piles in the New Year means that "fried piles are boring and the house is full of gold and silver". As early as the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Qu Dajun recorded in "Guangdong Xinyu": "Those who fry the pile take glutinous rice flour as the size circle and fry it in oil, so as to worship the ancestors and give gifts to relatives and friends."
In the past, it was a grand thing to make fried piles. It was necessary to drive all the children out of the studio and say auspicious words while frying them, so as to pray for a long future.
7. Egg powder
Guangzhou people also fry eggs in the New Year, which is famous for its crispness. Legend has it that once during the Spring Festival, when every family prepared peanuts, sesame seeds, sugar and other fillings for oil angle to cook, one family was too poor to buy fillings, so they squashed the dough originally used to make oil angle into a frying pan. When the New Year arrived, the poor people took out the dough to greet their friends. Everyone found it crisp and crisp, and it was delicious to melt in the mouth, so they asked the name. After careful consideration, the poor people said, "Because the ingredients have eggs, and the characteristics of melting in the mouth are like falling apart, let's call it scattered eggs."
Just flour, eggs, and south milk are all you need. The usual practice is to cut the rubbed dough into a rectangle, cut three knives in the middle of the rectangle dough, then put one side of the rectangle through the middle incision to form a bow, and then fry it in the oil pan.
8. Radish cake
Radish cake is a favorite snack of Guangzhou people, and it is also a festive food during the Spring Festival. A few days before the Chinese New Year, housewives will go to the market to buy back several kilograms of white radish, as well as ingredients such as dried shrimps and sticky rice noodles.
Making radish cake is not easy at all: first peel off the radish, and then patiently slice it into silk. Usually, it takes a competent housewife half an hour to finish the work. Then, the shredded radish should be cooked, mixed with sticky rice flour, and the two raw materials should be stirred into paste. Then, shrimp, bacon, lard, pepper, soy sauce, monosodium glutamate and refined salt should be added and steamed. Radish cake is usually fried in oil for a few minutes in a flat pan. It tastes delicious and is the favorite of many children during the Chinese New Year.
9. oil angle
Guangzhou people want to bomb oil angle during the Chinese New Year, and take the meaning of "wok" for the sake of being as oily and rich as that wok in the coming year. In the past, people in Guangzhou, rich or poor, always boiled oil at the end of the year. The size of oil angle indicates a safe family. The auspicious meaning of oil angle's symbol: it is shaped like a "purse", that is, a wallet.
Although it's called oil angle, it's like bombing. However, oil angle's stuffing is sweet, and it is also mixed with shredded coconut, fried peanuts, sesame seeds and other fragrant fruits, and wrapped in a skin. Different from Bao jiaozi, oil angle does not use ruffles but locks the edges. After being folded in half, it is gently kneaded into hemp rope with nails along the edge, and then it can be eaten after moderate frying.
10, Xiaokouzao
Xiaokouzao is a fried snack variety in Guangzhou snacks, which is named after its upper end cracked after frying. Xiaokou jujube is sweet and crisp, very delicious. In general, there are dates with smiles in the places where you eat morning tea in Guangzhou. At the same time, Xiaokouzao is also one of Guangzhou people's Spring Festival new year goods.
You can use 500 grams of flour, 250 grams of sugar, 50 grams of raw oil, 4 grams of cooking powder, and water 150 grams of flour to make smiling jujube at home. Remember not to rub the dough, but to "fish it evenly", flatten it, fold it again and again, knead it into balls of similar size, and roll it with sesame seeds. When frying in the pot, the dough should be placed along the edge of the pot, so that the dough will naturally "smile".
1 1, potted vegetables
Eating potted vegetables is a traditional custom in the coastal areas of Guangdong, Hong Kong, the New Territories and even Southeast Asia. During the Chinese New Year, the whole family gathered together, enjoying a rich and steaming pot dish, chatting and having fun.
Some people say that the taste of potted vegetables is second, and the atmosphere is more important. You don't have to be polite when eating potted vegetables, even if you turn the dishes over with chopsticks, it's not rude, because good materials sink to the bottom of the pot, and a variety of comfortable eating methods are more suitable for family reunion.
12, mouse shell
Guǒ, also known as Zike Guo, is a traditional snack in Chaoshan, Guangdong Province, and there are generally rat Qu Guo in Chaoshan folk festival to worship ancestors. Popular in Chaoan County, Xiangqiao District, Chenghai City and Raoping County.
Every year from the 24th of December to the Lantern Festival of the following year, every household makes rat songs, which were usually made three or four days before the Chinese New Year, but now there are many stalls selling them every day.